Nepenthe
by Acey Dearest
Summary: When a person loses her purpose, who can she turn to? Kuririn and Juuhachigou get-together. Chapter four uploaded. Finally.
1. Prelude

"Nepenthe" by Acey  
  
Disclaimer: Incredible that I still have to put one. All right, I'll oblige. DBZ is Mr. Akira Toriyama's. Not Miss Acey's.  
  
Author's Note: Some of the more recent K/18's I've started to see around here are following almost the exact same plotlines e-ver-y time (I'm not kidding! I can tell by simply the summaries!), though far from all, thankfully. Seeing as the romance may become cliched... (which I really don't want to happen), I'm doing my own while I still can. With something of a twist, maybe something of an A/U, and my specialty angst. Other people have neat specialties like romance or mystery or A/U... mine's just angst. But it's okay. Me and the angst category go way back... I hope you enjoy.  
  
This fic is dedicated to my very good friend Rachael. You're a really great person, don't forget it!  
  
A blonde woman sat beneath a tree still untouched by autumn's onset. A short, scrubby thing, it had somehow managed to withstand the cold chill of winters past, but the chances were slim that it would ever become more than what it was, one of the many.  
"You're bored," her brother said, absently half-throwing his tarnished ax at another tree. It flew straight through the trunk of the first tree and into another. He smirked out of pure reflex at the sight, watching with a methodic expression as the first fell, and then the second tree with it, a domino effect.  
"Nice deduction. You should take up psychiatry," she said. The usual double-edged response to the usual sardonic statement.  
"Can you imagine them letting the highly armed, esteemed, and dangerous cyborg into the classroom? No, Juuhachi, I prefer it here."  
"You don't." This was a new thought, one that had come to mind only the second before she had said it, one that she would have regretted had Juunanagou not been in a sadistically good mood, and had she not been his sister. He cocked his head mockingly.  
"Really? You think so?"  
She rolled her eyes, thinking 'juvenile' but refraining from saying it. She leaned her back slightly against the tree, picking up a dried leaf.  
"Juunanagou, look around. There is nothing here. Nothing."  
Her brother silent, Juuhachigou continued.  
"There isn't a single person here within twenty acres. That should mean something to you." It once had. "Well? Are you afraid?"  
An interesting thought, Juuhachigou decided. Perhaps that was the reason for her twin's withdrawal from society, from cities, from the humans. And with his withdrawal had come her own.  
He replied with a laugh, caustic, devoid of much in the way of feeling as he brought the axe down on one of the fallen trees.  
"Afraid of them? The Saiyans? No. I can stand them to a point. Even the Namek. But they'd catch on to both of us if we went back to our usual activities. I don't think that being destroyed is on either of our agendas."  
So Juunanagou realized through his blind pride that they were stonger than him. He disguised the fear, if indeed there really was one (in Juuhachigou's experience there had been, but she was not completely sure as far as Juunanagou went), with reasoning, with logic. All well and good and true to being. He was designedto be rational, to think with an ever-annoyingly clear head, and would had it not been for his self-centeredness, his conceit. Such human characteristics, vaguest proof of his former self, were such a downfall. No wonder he was the one with the flaws.  
"You are an egomaniac," she said wearily, and went back to the cabin.  
  
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"The cabin" being their home, Juunanagou's main accomplishment since Cell, though Juuhachigou seriously doubted that either of them would ever call it with the term of endearment. It served its purpose; it gave them a better place to sleep than the forest's ground did, and that was all that mattered about it. Neither of them had bothered to put any decorative work into the place, believing it to be unimportant if they even thought of it at all. Two rough beds, chairs and a table were the only major furnishings, sufficient enough to suit their needs, at least--  
"Juunanagou."  
Her twin was on the other side of the room, having followed her back, flipping through a paper taken from who knew where.  
"Yes."  
"I've decided what it is that's wrong with this place," she said, expecting the response she was given, a sarcastic "really" and a return to whatever the piece of paper had to offer.  
"Yes. It doesn't have windows."  
The other cyborg raised his cold gaze from the paper, eyes mocking.  
"You never specified that it needed them, Juuhachi. I thought you prefered the-- ah, rustic look. Windows were a luxury once, after all."  
She shot back the first words she thought of.  
"Juvenile. Every place needs windows, every place but this has windows."  
No wound evident from the look on her brother's face, a near-mirror image of her own. No wound at all. Juunanagou replied, sounding less childish, almost bitingly unfeeling.  
"Calm down. I didn't think you would notice if I didn't put them there, that's all. Our eyesight's a bit too good to truly need glass to let in the light, don't you think? And you didn't notice until now."  
"Playing another game, this time on your only sister?" Juuhachigou said finally, flippantly. "If so they must be getting more and more boring to you. Windows. How long were you guessing that I wouldn't notice?"  
He raised a few fingers, quickly, as though there was a timeer somewhere that would explode if he did not do so in as much hurry as he could manage.  
"Three weeks. It took you four. So much for what's left of your humanity." He paused, uncaring. "Or both of ours."  
  
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	2. Andante

"Nepenthe" by Acey  
  
Disclaimer: Me: Five-nothing without shoes, flipflops, or my friend Erin's four-inch-heels. Mr. Toriyama: I believe around about ten inches taller, give or take. *Sighs* Eh, I blame it on the genes.  
  
Author's Note: As you probably noticed when you went to this chapter, I'm naming all chapters by musical terms/classical music styles. Most of the time the mood or what happens in the story has a tad to to with the musical terminology, and some of it's so obvious it's almost scary. Thank you for reading and reviewing, and I hope sincerely that you enjoy chapter two.  
  
She left the cabin, left the thick darkness of the forest and the hollowness of her brother's presence, walked away from it knowing that her return would be soon. Juunanagou knew it too from the look on his pale face as she walked out, expression a mix of condescending and simple boredom. 'So he tires of the woods as well,' Juuhachigou thought, for once contemplating beyond her general thoughts on her sibling, that somehow whatever completely adult processes of thought in him had been either erased by Gero or had not existed in the first place. It was refreshing at times to be around someone who would do whatever pleased them regardless of the consequences, regardless if she his sister thought his plans and ideas about such were idiotic. Juuhachigou half-smiled, not realizing that bullheaded attribute was hers as well when dealing with most people, as she absently treaded, footsteps light, to nowhere from nowhere.   
She had never planned out her destinations before, had felt no need to. She would merely go to the first place she came to and noticed, usually ending up in the same sorts of places: the mini-mall, clothing stores. Places such that Juunanagou hated and let everyone know that he hated, places that Juuhachigou loved. The sight of clothing stores and such was not precisely cheering but was necessary nonetheless. It was almost a game to her, a solitary distraction that got her farther than chopping down a few dozen trees would, she thought as she looked up.  
It was the same building as the one she had come to one her last venture to civilization. A clothing store, darkened with signs indicating the change in seasons from summer to fall with silly brown and gold leaves drawn on them and the words "Fall Sale" inscribed beneath them. She went inside.  
"Miss?"  
She searched for a few words and they came as crisp and cold as the autumn breeze, unfeelingly.  
"When was this store's last new clothing shipment?"  
The manager was helpless. He had seen her in his store before.  
"A month ago, Miss. We get more every two months. But if you stay we can show you some excellent styles in clothing we have now--"  
"I was in here two weeks ago and I found nothing excellent," she said before going for the door, leaving the bewildered manager and his customers behind.  
  
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She checked her surroundings and noticed she was at the mini-mall,with its four hardly connected stores, a video rental, the said clothing store, and two dilapidated independent shops. They all looked tired, run down somehow like a businessman pressed far past his normal hours of sleep, wake and work for too long. It annoyed her to see such disrepair and Juuhachigou stood from the sidewalk pavement, arms folded against the cool she could not feel, and she lifted herself up in flight, over the heads of the mini-mall's patrons and eventually above the mini-mall itself. Whatever people watched her do so she cared nothing about. They were inferior, pathetically inferior; what they saw that was better than them they either feared or worshipped or ignored like idiots, deciding it was all a trick of the mind.They were a weak lot, and Juuhachigou bitterly hated the fact that once she had been like them, feeble, easily broken by manipulation, emotional turmoil.   
Sentimentality ruined the humans, ruined all humans, and made them worthless, kept them from realizing much in the way of potential. Even the human warriors Juuhachigou had encountered whe first activated had that idiotic sentiment about them, the one she had kissed on the cheek (Kuririn? That was his name, yes, data reminded her) probably most of all.  
'It's different for him.' She surprised herself by mentally defending him. 'It isn't so annoying an attribute when he's displaying it.'  
Her mind rushed for a reasoning, some worthy-sounding, if faulty, explanation for such thinking.  
'The others are more hardened. It doesn't look so well to see them with that emotion. Kuririn isn't and thus the attribute is changed.' That sounded plausible, at least, put her mind at slight ease. Now the question only was where she would now go.  
  
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"Kuririn. It's suppertime." The turtle poked his head inside the former monk's doorway. "Kuririn?"  
He was awake, staring up at the low ceiling as he lay on his bed. No, not at the ceiling, the turtle realized belatedly; his eyes were admittedly getting dimmer, at a book.  
"What's that you're reading?" Umigame seriously hoped it was not a bodice ripper romance with a picture of a woman in cleavage clutching a shirtless man like he had seen by Master Roshi's bedstead at times.  
Kuririn looked up. "Oh. Umigame," he said, calling the turtle by name. "It's just an old novel. 'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald." He shrugged. "I read it once when I first came here to train; I didn't quite understand it then. I was hoping I could now."  
The turtle's question was plainitive.  
"Are you?"  
"More than I did. The only thing that ever drove me crazy about the book was the fact that Gatsby could love someone like Daisy."  
Umigame nodded, having never read any novel in his exceptionally long lifespan.  
"Gatsby's character is so much better than Daisy's; she doesn't deserve someone like him at all."  
The turtle nodded again, wondering just how cold the food would get before Kuririn stopped his book discourse. Fortunately respite came quickly.  
"Kuririn! Come down here, did that old turtle die on the way to tell you it was suppertime?" and the former monk replied with an abashed, "No, Master" and ran downstairs. 


	3. Nocturne

"Nepenthe" by Acey  
  
Disclaimer: Okay, something tells me that Mr. Fitzgerald is dead (disclaimer for last chapter). Maybe the Introduction in my library book. And that Mr. Toriyama lives in Japan, not Georgia, and that as such it's obvious I'm not either one of them...  
  
Author's Note: Sorry this came out so late; I've been swamped with geometry finals and so forth and couldn't find the time to finish the chapter until now... I hope you enjoy it.  
  
Supper was eaten quietly that evening. Roshi had abstained from watching his favorite exercise program as he ate, something that Kuririn did not inquire about out of the knowledge that the show was off the air until the Christmas specials went away with the season. The extent of Kuririn's conversation was to pass a plate of cake over at dessert. Unnatural for him, Roshi noticed as he did so, handing the knife along with the plate.  
"Master Roshi?"   
The aged man turned to his former pupil.  
"Yes, Kuririn?"   
He paused for a second, wondering on how to put his thoughts into words and then have them be understood. Roshi waited.  
"Nothing. Just that... it's nothing." Kuririn looked away as he spoke, as if he expected some reproof, an admonition that it was best to tell what was in your mind, something like that. It did not come. His master merely nodded his head, a little sadly, reflecting on days spent too soon and years passed too quickly. Kuririn came close to catching the sigh that preceded Roshi's next comment, closer than he would realize. But it was lost before he could seize it, like a butterfly almost in the net, only to fly away.  
"Well, Kuririn, when you're done with that cake you can get me the channel guide on the sofa... I need to see when they'll hurry up and finish with those specials..."  
The younger man nodded instinctively and obeyed.  
  
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When Juuhachigou returned to the cabin she found that her brother had left again, likely for chopping down another set of trees. She had never inquired of him why he even bothered, especially with the axe, when he could have easily cleared it in minutes, seconds possibly, with a blast of energy. Surely trees were as easy to clear away as buildings were to level. Though, in retrospect, she had never seen him level a building and doubted she ever would.  
Juuhachigou dismissed the thought idly and shut the rough-hewn wooden door, rolling her eyes at the coarseness of it. Juunanagou likely could have done a bit better with the whole of the cabin, but he seemed content with it as it stood, just a place to come back to and no more. The lack of windows was more noticable than ever and made the place intolerably dreary to her eyes.  
"What did you intend on building, Juunana, a cabin or a prison?" she said aloud, sardonic, expecting no answer and receiving none. Her brother would come back eventually and the boredom would drag on. He was only good to be around in small doses. To percieve his outlook on things was only invigorating for a short period of time before it became annoying and then intolerable. Juuhachigou could see where that doubtless would not bode well for him in the future if he ever found a girlfr--  
She stopped herself. Cyborgs were as likely candidates for finding potential spouses as microorganisms. She had known that since activation, since far before that small kiss--  
That idiotic kiss! That human Kuririn had probably taken it too seriously from his actions later on. Foolishness on his part. He ought to have seen the obvious, shouldn't have been so believing and innocent. Juuhachigou wanted nothing to do with him; Kuririn had to know that, or else he would figure it out eventually by the fact that she had not said a word or even looked for him since the day at the Lookout. Her "see you sometime" was a ruse. He was capable of understanding that.  
All right, she thought, rephrasing her statement. Doubtless any poor, pathetic girl that had somehow fallen in love with her brother would tire of his outlook sooner or later. There. Detached, cold, textbook-thought.   
It didn't enter her mind that Gero would have been proud of that accomplishment.  
  
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Juunanagou came back a few minutes later, axe in hand. He set it down on the table and waited expectantly with a derisive expression on his face. Whatever he had waited for did not come immediately and he plunged into conversation.  
"So," he said, watching the effect of his word and smirking as he did, "you asked me earlier if I was afraid of the fighters. I never asked you how you felt about them, Juuhachi."  
Her reply was reflexive.  
"I feel the same way about them as you do, only I can't honestly say I can stand the Saiyans."  
"Annoyed by excessive food indulges and more power than you? Even I know they're stonger than me now; I just wouldn't like the fact thrown in my face-- but I never took you for one to be jealous just because of that."  
"I'm not. They can have their power. It's just Vegeta that I'd like to see die."  
He ignored the statement and probed forward, waiting for a slip somewhere so he could joke about it until he tired of it or she stopped becoming upset when he mentioned it.  
"What about the other ones, the Namek and the humans? Tell me that."  
"I don't care what happens to any of them."  
Juunanagou smirked. "One of them apparently cares for what happens to you. I know you too well to think you had any feelings for him. I doubt if you could find a more pathetic example of the human race if you tried."  
She nodded, having told him of what Kuririn had tried to do for her before. He had laughed it off when she had.  
"And what should I do about him?"  
His answer was wearily toned.  
"I don't mind particularly. Lead him on to believe you care about him and expose his foolishness in caring for you if you want. Leave him thinking you'll come back for the rest of his life. It doesn't matter to me."  
The conversation ended, he sat down and took up his axe again, getting a stick of half-rotted wood from a pocket and trying to whittle it out of lack of anything better to do.   
Juuhachigou sighed and left the room to go to bed.  
  
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	4. Da Capo

"Nepenthe"  
  
by Acey  
  
Disclaimer: Mr. Toriyama= Dragon Ball Z. Acey= one (1) high school freshman's G.P.A., little (almost zero) money, two (2) pairs of smudged, thick glasses, and two dozen (24) notebooks filled with inadvertent, poor examples of writing. Not that I've gotten any better, but still.  
  
Author's Note: I'm very sorry for not updating this sooner; a lot of things went on. But I do have some good news. The K/18 Campaign has been set up for authors/supporters of that slowly declining genre of DBZ romance (we can't die out to all the other couples! We're one of the only six couples in the entire show that's canon; that should mean something!), and if you want, you can look at it and join at Deadly Beauty's profile page . =) I tend to talk too much . . . on with it. Extra-large chapter for the heinous wait.  
  
Juuhachigou had taken to going out more often. Juunanagou didn't know if that went along with the change in seasons and the ever so slow emergence of spring or if she was growing tired of the cabin. Most likely it was the former. Juunanagou never really knew what went on in his twin's mind, but he did know that life in the woods had a way of making one bored with its languishing winter days with the barren trees whistling into the cool wind and summers when crickets chirped their own requiem. He did not mind it so much-- the woods seemed endless to him, unchanged except for where his axe had touched the bark of trees. He liked that about it, for it made him feel in control, much more than a life in the city would have, with its human loudness and compaction, where businessmen drove their Lexuses down the streets that prostitutes and homeless walked, and never did a thing for them. Better here where there was none of mankind's disruptive and changing force at work, none of the same disruptive force that had taken his sister and himself to the dwelling place of a wizened man some years before, something neither of them could now recall doing, but surely they must have done at one point, somehow, never to return again to whatever life they had had before then, but to go on, forever, with a dismal adolescent eternity the only thing that hinted of a past.  
  
He had said that those few acres would be his retreat, his and his sister's, three months before. He had originally intended for there to be some apartment in a suburb where they could stay if they found the rustic life unattractive. Juunanagou had not come through with those plans, and Juuhachi had not pushed him into them, either. Now he knew that his retreat had turned into a living quarters, and he felt that Juuhachi was tiring of it.  
  
Yes, that was why she went to the city. The rural area left nothing for her, and he should have known it. He did know it, but he had thought of himself first when he chose the area, as he so frequently, condemnably frequently did, and she had agreed--  
  
He shrugged. It wasn't his fault she found more enjoyment in trying on clothes than being around his acreage. It was her loss, not his own. But it nagged at him, like a first-time thief's conscience nags at him, until he becomes used to the thing and ignores it. She hadn't been like that before, of that he was sure.  
  
Juunanagou sighed without realizing he had given in to such an emotion, and decided to peruse it no further, not this night. Lithely he walked to the door to his room and went to bed.  
  
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True to his expectations, Juuhachi did go out the next day before he got out of bed, flying with a vague look in her eye toward the city that bustled with the callous roughness and foolishness of people. She had changed her route, finally, unbeknownst to her sibling, opting for a coffeeshop where writers converged, their notebooks mostly replaced by personal computers they were in debt for but believed could one day pay off, if their first novels turned out to be the best-sellers they hoped they would be. They drank their coffee with gusto, as though it was their one source of fuel and inspiration, while she looked on, impassive, cold. One individual managed to type with his left hand while he grabbed his cup with the other and drank from it, free hand reaching and pressing the other keys. Juuhachi was tempted to roll her eyes at this latest example of human foolishness.  
  
The man at the counter was kind, wire-rimmed glasses threatening to steam up with every pot of coffee he brought to the front from the kitchen, a faded, older man who looked as if he hadn't seen or heard of such a thing as a machine that would automatically make hot drinks for its customers, except it be him. White haired and blue eyed, he asked the small man in front of Juuhachigou what he would like, pausing after a second before the customer could speak.  
  
"Wait, now, I know you-- you always get the cocoa, correct?"  
  
A nod.  
  
"Yes, sir." The customer had a shy voice, as though directly below it was a note of uncertainty, and as though he were uncomfortable, almost. It was a familiar voice to Juuhachi's ears, but it took a glance in his direction for her to be sure.  
  
"Juuhachigou!" he said in surprise, noticing her first. Kuririn, yes, patently Kuririn. His small frame should have been the first clue, but as she looked at him she realized how distinct his features were, the lack of a nose, the thick black eyebrows, the shaved head. Such a nice face, befitting his personality.  
  
She nearly choked on the realization of what her last thought had been. Kuririn was waiting for her response beside her, still waiting as the man behind the counter came out with the cocoa, flustered as he got it and paid for it and the man turned in her direction.  
  
"Black coffee." Why she wanted it in the first place was inconceivable, but he obliged and got it for her, going back to the kitchen and emerging with a steaming pot of the stuff, pushing his cap back on the top of his head as he poured it into a cup.  
  
"One-fifty," the man at the counter said, handing the cup to her as she dug around for money in her pocket. She found it in change, the last remnant of currency from a wallet her brother had stolen from a man some time before, nonchalantly handing it to her, saying that now that the Saiyans were watching them Juuhachi should begin buying her clothes, and she had said that he should in turn begin looking for a job--  
  
She glanced at Kuririn's face again, taking in the paused, expectant look on his face and watching quietly as it now clouded with disappointment, as he, sighing, turned away from her. Juuhachigou knew then that he had wanted her to acknowledge his words, wanted her to respond, somehow, recognized that he needed her to say something back to him and not responding to his need. He held his plastic cup of hot chocolate almost at his side now, arm barely bent enough to keep it from spilling. Kuririn's mind had not been on the chocolate since he first saw Juuhachigou standing there, and now it was as far from it as ever. She realized who it had been on.  
  
Unwillingly she heard herself speak, assuring herself that it was only to keep him from walking out, deciding that yes, she would lead him along as her brother had said, letting him think that she had a liking for him when, after all, no one of worth did or would.  
  
"Kurir--"  
  
He was already gone, trudging away from the shop with slumped shoulders, leaving her to her silent thoughts, knowing better than to think she would look for him, not after that impassive quiet with which without words had answered everything. Every hope he had had for her with him had been swiftly banished, cast away like the nets of fishermen. No, the one he loved so dearly was as Pygmalion's statue, no matter how he had wished it otherwise-- believed it otherwise. He had thought there was some heart behind the exterior, some semblence of humanity left, enough to answer him in some manner, to tell him that he was worth one breath of her air, despite it all. But he knew as well as anyone else did now, as he should have known so much before this time.  
  
She would not follow him.  
  
She did not follow him. 


	5. Solo

"Nepenthe"  
  
by Acey  
  
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.   
  
Author's Note: If anyone gets the "Twilight Zone" in-joke, I will pay you. Honestly.   
  
Kuririn was back at home a half-hour later, patient face sober, eyes withdrawn, downcast. His orange gi today had been exchanged for a plain white T-shirt and beige slacks, the effect of which had been mildly surprising for Juuhachigou a little earlier but did not suit him at all now. The chocolate had been left untouched, dumped discreetly into a garbage can at the park along the way so the elderly man in the coffeeshop would not see.   
  
He flew only when it was expedient, over from the mainland to the little island with the pink house stenciled neatly with the inscription "KAME HOUSE" in clashing crimson. The rest of the way was made in a slumped walk that only improved when he neared the edge of the mainland; the flight was improved upon in a similar way, when his shoes hit the sand and he exhaled, reminded that he was where he should be, and that was better than nothing at all.  
  
Kuririn opened the door, saw Roshi sitting on the sofa, watching the television. He shut it off as he realized his former pupil was there, greeted him, asked him how town was as rural people ask when going to the store. A similar greeting and a "fine" was all Roshi managed to get out of the man, as he pulled a random,tattered book off of the bookshelf and cast his sight on the first page he turned to.   
  
"Reading again?"  
  
Kuririn looked up to see the wizened face of the old man straight ahead of him. In ordinary fashion he replied with the customary "Yes, Master."  
  
Roshi pointed at the book. "Poe, eh?"  
  
"Yes. Master." No allusion to the fact that he had surpassed the aged teacher more than a decade before, none whatsoever. It was a small kindness, but one Roshi was thankful for, very thankful, because the way to kill a man's soul is to let him know that he is useless. Long had Kuririn assured him that such was untrue, and although for many years, the old man had in his heart doubted it, his mind chose to believe the small, former monk over any other sign-- of aging, of weakness, of the slow but coming, ever coming being called Death.  
  
Roshi smiled, making the wrinkles in his lined face appear even more harshly drawn.   
  
"He's good. Movies they show these days-- they aren't really as scary as his stories, just gory, kind of make you cringe. But Poe wrote the horror first. Everyone after who wrote it took off of him."  
  
He was being more talkative than usual, whether to ease the cordial quiet of his former pupil or merely in a nostalgic mood, Kuririn didn't know. Idly he marvelled at this small store of knowledge and wondered where Roshi had picked it up, if he were not lying rather well.  
  
"What story?"  
  
Kuririn turned the book toward him.   
  
"It's a poem, actually; one of his most famous: 'The Raven.''Quoth the raven, nevermore--' that one." He watched as the old man leaned over the words, waiting for his next question. It came almost immediately.  
  
"Lenore?"  
  
"That was the narrator's dead wife. I've read it before--"  
  
To Master Roshi's aging eye it appeared that Kuririn was starting to make a habit out of rereading books. Roshi himself was rather infamously prone to reread rather racy magazines-- or rather, restare at the hardly-clad models inside the racy magazines-- but the classics that Kuririn kept reading again and again were about as devoid of that sort of thing as silent films are devoid of sound. Next thing I know he'll go back to being a monk, Roshi thought wryly after a moment, then, surprised at that, decided to continue to look over Kuririn's shoulder at the book until Kuririn objected to it or Kuririn shut the book, neither of which he would probably do.  
  
A passage gaped at him on the page by virtue of the sheer unfamiliarity of the words. He turned them over in his mind before speaking them aloud.  
  
"'Respite, respite, and nepenthe, quaff, o quaff this kind nepenthe--' what's he talking about?"  
  
Kuririn glanced at him before replying.  
  
"Respite's relief. I'm not sure about the rest, but I think I remember something in the Greek myths--"  
  
Condemn the Greek myths, the moment he had thought of them his mind had gone back to her, to the pale figure in the coffeeshop standing near him, blonde hair like cornsilk slightly blown by the air conditioner in the building-- a forbidden jewel that is nonetheless desired, wanted badly. It had not been infatuation that had turned his eyes toward hers that morning nor any of the other days he had seen her go by from the day of activation on, of that he was perfectly certain. She had cursed him. There would be no happy ending here, not with the imitation of life he loved so dearly, for that was for the Greek myths, for dear old Pygmalion the sculptor and his beautiful statue of marble blessed by Aphrodite to receive breath.  
  
'But my statue breathes. It breathes but does no more, speaks without meaning because there is no meaning to a life without purpose, to an eternity to look forward to with no change and no concept of what change is. She doesn't realize-- know--'  
  
"--that the word 'nepenthe' was some sort of drug to induce forgetfulness of sorrow. I don't know about 'quaff;' here, Master Roshi, I'll look it up--"  
  
"You don't have to bother doing that, son; I was only--"  
  
"No, it's fine, really." He took a few short steps toward the bookshelf, selected Webster's Dictionary. Turning, he flipped to the back of the large volume, sooty eyes scanning each page until he found the word he was looking for.  
  
"Here it is. Quaff-- drink."  
  
"Heh. I don't remember Poe's stuff being that wordy."  
  
Kuririn shrugged limply, wondering which of Poe's works his master had read, for they all were wordy.  
  
"I don't know. A lot of his stuff to me was worse."  
  
"You mean it?"  
  
He nodded.  
  
The old man immediately handed the collection of Poe back to Kuririn. "I'll settle for Playboy."  
  
The last few hours of the day went by like a middle-aged woman's struggles with aerobic excercises prolonged by at least a full hour. It seemed like the clock had broken sometime between five in the afternoon and six to Kuririn, Kuririn who was gloomily, idly watching the sun go down again as he ate dinner with less enthusiasm than ever. Neither the turtle nor the aging relic could cheer him and only Roshi could guess at why. For all of his strikingly bad character flaws, at heart the martial arts master had good intentions.  
  
He had thought that Kuririn was in the midst of losing whatever sadness was there when he had found him reading, had talked to him. But then something had shut itself closed sometime during the conversation, something untouchable but necessary, something that had drained the energy from the words-- from Kuririn himself-- and made them half-hearted.   
  
'Maybe it was drained from the start, and you didn't realize it,' Roshi thought, mentally calling himself "old man," as he picked up a few of the dishes and told Kuririn to go on ahead and not worry about helping him. 'You don't notice things like you used to.' All very true, but then he had not been a young man even when he truly was Kuririn's master and teacher, and he knew the small fighter's mood changes like a meteorologist knows the weather, or knew them as well as he could without delving inside. At least, so he had thought for a long time. Yet now here was Kuririn, gloomy, down, and Roshi could see no reason for any of it.  
  
The old man's rhuemy eyes scanned his former pupil's face, the slightly tanned skin acquired from years spent on a tropical island, coal-colored eyes and eyebrows (he had never known Kuririn to let his razor rust, for habits died hard, but he guessed that his hair was the same color), both downcast. Roshi saw all this and hastily decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns.  
  
"Kuririn. Tell me, what's the matter?"  
  
He looked up.  
  
"Nothing, really," he said, ruefully.   
  
"You haven't said a word all afternoon, not since you were reading that book." Half a bit of inspiration hit him, but he closed his mouth before he could say it, for more than likely it was incorrect-- very incorrect. His former pupil had been hard hit by love, what with Maron a year or so ago.  
  
Maron. She had been a nice enough girl, and certainly looked the part of the models that graced the covers of the old man's magazines-- blue-haired and eyed, endowed, 'a practical Bulma clone,' Oolong had irritatedly said once, 'without the brain.' Mr. Briefs must've tinkered with cloning before capsules held his interest, he guessed, only half-jokingly, and as Maron was the result he pursued this interest no further.  
  
But Maron had originally meant well, albeit everything else, and Kuririn, with absolutely no firsthand experience with women, had trusted in that. Vapid though she was, Kuririn was serious about her-- had been about to propose, before she had run off on him with someone else, some old boyfriend, distinctly better-looking than Kuririn had ever hoped to be but with none of the heart, more than likely, Roshi thought bitterly, annoyed, and that had destroyed all of Kuririn's hopes.  
  
He ought to have known that his feelings for her were not returned by many means, if ever. For her beauty, her overall cheery manner-- there was almost absolutely nothing underneath, and Kuririn had not seen that. More than a decade later, Roshi would think of Maron again-- a smarter Maron, less inclined to niceties-- when he met Bulma's second child at the last tournament Roshi ever attended, and he would again wonder at the Briefs-- jokingly, of course, but with a hint of more than humor in his thoughts. If life had been a sixties "Twilight Zone" special, the Briefs would be the mastermind, individuality-less cloners. 'Number twelve looks just like you, Maron,' he had thought, but Kuririn would not have gotten the joke, and nor would have anyone else.  
  
When she had outright rejected him some months ago it had hurt the former monk more than even his master had realized. Roshi had attempted comfort (Oolong had been less help), as had most everyone else that knew anything about it. Before unhappiness could completely take him over, though, there had been the cyborgs to worry about, and then Cell--  
  
And poor Kuririn had become attached to one of them, the blonde Juuhachigou. He had seen something beyond the icy exterior and the cool shoves back, the cruel logic that dominated nearly every action. No reasoning of anyone around him could convince him otherwise; he was sure there was something beyond, beneath--  
  
As he must have been certain the one kiss she administered like a bittersweet medicine meant more than a means to terrify.  
  
'No. He may have thought that at first but he can't anymore. Juuhachigou brushed him back for good at the Lookout, and he's taken it for what it is. He must have-- he should have. This gloominess's coming from someplace else.'  
  
It was not. 


End file.
